


I Can't Leave You 'til You're Dead

by Loz



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Humor, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Violence, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Vampires, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 04:36:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/pseuds/Loz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternative title: 5 Times Stiles and Derek Advocated for One Another’s Death (and Each Time Acted the Opposite of Their Words)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Leave You 'til You're Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JenNova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenNova/gifts).



> This was written for JenNova, because I cherish and adore her. The title is from the exceptionally goofy song 'The Ballad of Tom Jones' by Space and Cerys Matthews, because it came on my music shuffle and consequently inspired the fic.

Stiles is babbling at a hundred miles a minute. “Eat him, he’d be delicious. I’m all twig-like and stringy, but look at this guy, he has real meat on his bones. Plus, I bet his bones snap with a satisfying crunch. And, hey, if you’re worried about the fur, you can chargrill him and burn it off!”

It’s a low-blow. Stiles feels bad. Terrified and about to piss his pants, but bad. No one wants to be reminded of the past like that. Not when it might already be flashing across their eyes.

Derek is beyond scowling. The look he passes Stiles’ way is a fucking _glower_. Stiles wriggles, hoping the wendigo makes a decision soon. With Derek in one hand and Stiles in another, maybe it wants to devour them like a double stuffed oreo --- and isn’t that a nice and disgusting simile to be thinking at a time like this. Ugh. Stiles may love living, but sometimes he hates his life. Except for how it’s exciting as hell. How many people can say they’ve encountered a wendigo and lived to tell the tale? Him, he hopes. And Derek, he supposes, if he must.

“It can’t understand you,” Derek says, sounding way too calm and collected given his wolfy face and, like, the whole deal of being brutally gripped by a monster. 

“But if it did, I’m sure it would agree that you look like the tastier prospect.”

Was that flirting? He hopes that wasn’t flirting. Derek rolls his eyes and huffs out a breath, which Stiles is about to mock as being his single expression, when suddenly he’s covered in blood and the wendigo is being eviscerated over his flailing body. 

“A little warning?” Stiles shrieks. Derek is wiping his claws against his jeans and if the wendigo isn’t dead, it deserves a freaking Oscar. 

“And what would you have me say? Stiles, I’m about to save your skinny ass. You might want to ready your tears of gratitude?”

“Uh, how about; Stiles, you’re about to get covered in green slime and blood because I like to kill things.”

Stiles struggles to get to his feet. Derek doesn’t offer a hand to help him up. 

“I don’t like to kill things. If I did, I’d ask my uncle his resurrection secrets and I’d kill you a thousand times over.”

“Oh, yeah, you don’t sound like you suffer from blood lust _at all_. I take my aspersions as to your manly goodwill back.”

“Shut up and help me bury this thing.”

“What with?”

Derek blinks, twice. For a second, he looks wrong-footed. It’s the kind of reaction Stiles hasn’t witnessed much in someone who’s gotten brooding and surliness down to an art form. Derek looks almost hesitant. 

And then he says, “The shovel I keep in the back of my Camaro,” and Stiles almost chokes to death laughing. 

*

Stiles is all hard spidery movements and dark eyes. He stalks around Derek like he thinks he’s a predator. It’s almost amusing. The last year has been cruel and kind. He looks less like the kid Derek could terrorize with a lunge and a sneer. His soft edges have been worn away and his inner solid core revealed through sharp cheekbones and sharper limbs. But he can still be as uncoordinated as ever and he demonstrates this now as he paces. 

“You’ll tire yourself out,” Derek says, lazily, sprawling on the floor with his back to the wall. 

He’d been on push-up number 28 when Stiles had rolled his head around on his shoulders and said, thick with disgust, “Can you not?” He decided to conserve energy. This is by no means the first time he’s been locked in a room. Though usually his assailants have the courtesy to put him in solitary confinement. 

Stiles bends down, one rapid, brutal snap until he’s eye level with Derek. It shouldn’t be as compelling as it is. 

“Good,” Stiles says. “Then I could sleep and not have to look at you.”

Derek takes a breath, slowly, times the seconds. A very insistent part of him wants to prove to Stiles that he’s prey. 

“I don’t know why you’re so angry at me,” he says, allowing his tone to be mild in order to provoke Stiles into further snarling. 

Nothing quite gets his ire than when Derek refuses to push back. When Derek finally realized his advantage, he used it to great effect. There is a point when anger consumes Stiles so completely he goes molten. Instead of cracking, breaking under the pressure, an inner survival instinct has him going jelly-legged and fury-eyed. He’s rolled his body into punches, slithered into Derek’s space, squeezed himself into situations he doesn’t belong. Derek enjoys it too much. He doesn’t usually give himself any creature comforts or moments of pleasure. But, this. This he will take.

“This was supposed to be a covert mission,” Stiles exclaims, standing tall again and flinging his arms behind him. “Until you had to come crashing in with Clawy and Slashy here.” He gestures to Derek’s hands with an emphatic nod. 

Derek presses his shoulders against the wall for leverage and springs to his feet. “If you were capable of being covert, we wouldn’t be here. They were stalking you, you idiot. If I hadn’t come clawing and slashing my way in, you’d be dead sooner rather than later.”

Stiles gasps out his indignation and retreats to the other side of the room. He crosses his arms against his chest and scowls. Derek has no idea how long they’re going to be here, but he has a feeling it’s going to bore him senseless if Stiles doesn’t begin to put up more of a fight. He partially shifts and starts to inspect his claws. They’ve healed from earlier, where two of them had snapped clear in half dragging Stiles back from the jaws of the rival Alpha following him. It’s as much another chance to piss Stiles off as it is a show of dominance. 

An hour later, they’re both sitting on the concrete floor, pretending not to stare at each other from opposite sides of the room. Derek has been listening intently to movement outside. He knows he isn’t in any danger. Not with the backing of the Alpha pack. But Stiles is another matter. Stiles is always another matter. Strictly speaking, he isn’t in Derek’s pack, and therefore, strictly speaking, if he knows about werewolves he must be a hunter. Deucalion and Peter are always saying that Derek needs to put Stiles through the initiation rite, and Derek doesn’t know how to explain that he would if Stiles showed any indication at all that he wanted that. Not without sounding weak. He’s looked pathetic enough in his dealings with Scott.

Stiles is mid-yawn when there’s a creak of the door and it’s flung open. Derek could have warned him. Chose not to. His spluttering is a useful distraction. Derek rises to his feet again, shaking his body out in a way he doesn’t really need.

“Finally,” he says, adopting some of Peter’s superior tone, honed from weeks of practice. “Have you made up your minds? Do you want to snap his neck, or shall I? I’m getting bored of toying with my food.”

Stiles’ mouth opens wider than Derek’s ever seen it before. He’d make a note of it, but he has to time this precisely. Stiles begins to mutter and rage, spittle cresting through the air in an arc. His hands are whirlwinds, his whole body thrumming. The beta that was sent looks unsure, unsteady at the situation. He rocks forward. And that is when Derek pounces. 

Stiles may not be covert, but he is fast, and he slides past Derek and the beta as they’re tussling, heads to the doorway. Derek uses his own belt to tie the beta’s arms, snaps his fingers for Stiles’. There’s an epic roll of eyes and then Derek can string up the beta’s legs, checking the restraints are tight enough they’ll be hard to force open. Deaton showed them all the technique during Alpha pack training, before they discovered the Alpha pack weren’t as evil as they’d originally assumed. 

Once they’re out of the warehouse --- and there are a couple of close calls with another beta --- Stiles turns to Derek. “You’re lucky I trusted you enough to know that you were planning something.”

“Stiles, that wasn’t trust. That was hope,” Derek mocks. 

He can feel a smile tugging at the corners of his lips and he tamps it down. Stiles can’t ever actually know that Derek revels in these moments. He’s not as much of a masochist as others make him out to be.

Stiles narrows his eyes at him, almost as if he can _tell_. “What happens now?” he asks, tone still smarting. 

“We take you home, you make liberal use of mountain ash, and I go and have discussions with the other Alpha,” Derek answers. He doesn’t mention the part where he’ll have to make reparations or start a war. 

“If you think I’m gonna thank you for saving my life, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” Stiles says as they make it to the Jeep and climb in. “I was this far away from gathering useful intel.”

“Not everyone comes back as a ghost. You should know that by now.”

“Peter is a terrible influence on you.”

Derek thinks about that. Since Peter came back, Derek hasn’t allowed himself to fully trust him --- there are some lines that can’t be crossed, some lies told --- but he does occasionally indulge in taking his advice. And, he guesses, minor personality traits. Though, really, this existed in him all along, he just needed it to be teased out, over months of exposure. 

Stiles normally drives well within speed limits, so it’s surprising that he guns the engine and takes no notice of the signs he streaks past. He drives well, though, assertively. Stiles is always his most focused when he’s on the road. If Derek didn’t know any better, he’d almost think he was rattled, or embarrassed, but Stiles doesn’t get embarrassed when he thinks he’s in the right, and he doesn’t smell concerned either. His heart has an uptick in its beat, but it’s difficult to discern if it’s a physical reaction to heightened adrenaline or not. 

“Well, Derek, as usual, this has both sucked and blown in equal measure. We have to stop meeting like this, and I really mean that,” Stiles says as he stops the Jeep down the street from his house. 

Derek can see the police cruiser in the driveway and understands why they’re not closer. Doesn’t mean he isn’t going to stick around to ensure Stiles does as he was damn well told. 

“I agree,” Derek replies. “Maybe if you stopped acting like you had a death wish, we would.”

“I never asked you to follow me,” Stiles says, hotly. He’s back to jittering again, not furious enough to lash out with a sinewy arch forward, but irritated enough he buzzes like a blowfly. 

“I never asked you to gather intel. I’d say we’re even on that front.” Derek gives Stiles a quick once-over, trying to determine the source of his impatience, notices the way he’s listing slightly to the right, as if to conceal --- “Have fun researching whatever it is you found in the warehouse, Stiles,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe you can also type in the keywords ‘poker face’.”

“Unfair advantage,” Stiles hollers, acting surprised, but that’s deception too. “And no one wants to be subjected to that much Lady Gaga.”

Derek hops down from the Jeep, but still leans in at the window. “Don’t forget the mountain ash. I can’t guarantee the pack won’t come after you.”

To double check that Stiles is sensible for once, Derek lingers. He loiters. He thinks Stiles sees him as he sprinkles the mountain ash, but hell, it isn’t like Stiles doesn’t have him listed as ‘A Class Creeper’ in his phone contacts anyway. 

It’s late by the time Stiles finishes and Derek pushes off from the wall he leaned against. Time to go and make amends with the intruding pack. Technically, they haven’t done anything wrong yet. Derek’s under no real illusions they’re up to anything good, considering they’re encroaching on another pack’s land and haven’t yet asked for safe passage or boarding. But he’s more optimistic these days and he’ll apply some of that happy-go-lucky spirit here. Maybe they hadn’t known the Hale pack was back in Beacon Hills. Could it be conceivable that Stiles’ little foray came an hour before they were about to pay their respects to Derek? Perhaps that wendigo two months ago hadn’t been trying to eat his face off. Life could be strange. 

Still, it’s worrying that he couldn’t get them out of there quicker with a simple challenge – “He belongs with me, back off.” He hadn’t exactly wanted to spend his day locked up in a small confined space with Stiles, no matter how much illicit amusement he derived from it. Derek may need to talk to Deucalion about this one. He suspects the answer will be the same.

*

Scott is whimpering, but Stiles has one hand and Derek has the other and they’re going to get through this. They have to. 

“You’re sure he needs a blood transfusion?” Stiles is asking for what seems like the ninetieth time. 

Deaton nods, sadly, brushing the hair out of Scott’s eyes. He looks as close to frantic as he ever gets and that makes everything worse. “If he doesn’t get a lot of blood soon, Scott will perish.”

“It should be Stiles’. They’re the same blood type,” Derek says, glancing up wildly. His nostrils flare as if he’s just sniffed to make sure his assertion was correct.

Deaton is about to speak, but Stiles cuts in. “Oh, my blood? What about yours, wolfboy, with its healing properties and its Alpha strength, _you’re_ pack, don’t you think you should be offering at the very least, or are you only too happy to see him die?”

 

It isn’t fair, he knows it isn’t fair. Derek cares for Scott in his own, weird way, and he’s saved him enough times to prove it. Saved them both, really, but Stiles doesn’t want to dwell on that. 

“Neither of you seem to understand. The donor has a high chance of dying themselves,” Deaton says. “Scott has almost been drained dry.”

“I’ll do it,” Stiles says at the same time Derek does. They stare at one another over Scott’s clammy, shivering body. 

“Will it take?” Derek asks Deaton urgently. 

“There’s a ritual I can perform,” Deaton confirms. 

“So you can use both of us?” Stiles asks.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Derek interjects. “I said that I’m willing to be the donor. I’ll do it. If you think it’ll take then there’s no need to put Stiles at risk, is there?”

“Using blood from both of you seems like the safest option,” Deaton answers Stiles, ignoring Derek. “And I think it might just work.”

When Stiles comes to three hours later, Scott is bouncing off the walls. Literally. Bouncing. Like a supercharged Tigger. Derek watches him from the other side of the room with the strangest expression on his face. Stiles would think it was pride if his lips weren’t downturned.

“Stiles! I was so worried about you, but Deaton said you’d be fine with some rest,” Scott says, stopping in the middle of a particularly high bounce and coming to stand by Stiles’ side. “Thanks, buddy,” he says sincerely. He looks like he’s about to lean down and kiss Stiles’ cheek. Stiles wouldn’t put it past him.

“Anything I could do,” Stiles says. He looks up and across the room. He wants to make up for earlier, so he shrugs his shoulders, wincing slightly. “That we could do.”

“Oh man. I’m like a cross between you and Derek now. The thought’s kinda horrifying,” Scott says. “Does that mean everything I say now is sarcastic or do the combined levels of sarcasm cancel each other out?”

“Only time will tell,” Derek says, definitely on the verge of smiling. He gets up, pats Scott on the shoulder. “Take it easy. Make sure Stiles gets home safe. I have some vampires to scare out of town.”

Stiles licks his lips, trying to get up. Failing. “And by scare you mean decimate.”

“Is there any way to do the reverse and keep the ten percent as a warning to other vampire covens?” Derek asks, more to himself than anyone else. But Stiles still chuckles and attempts to rise again. He manages this time, reaches out a hand. 

Derek stares at it for a second before taking it in a firm, but soft grip. Stiles has always minimized physical contact with Derek because he’s feared the obviousness of his reaction. He’s beyond caring at this point, just wanting to touch, to apologize, to thank, to say the hundreds of things he can’t say. Things like _’I know you’re a good man, really’_ and _‘for all your faults, I like you’_. 

If they hold hands for a little longer than necessary, no one comments on it. 

Stiles listens as Derek has a chat with Deaton before going, then looks up at Scott, who’s still jiggling around with excess energy. “You’re going to call the other pack members, right? Order them to have his back?”

“No. I’m gonna let Derek walk to his doom,” Scott intones, rolling his eyes. It appears the double dose of sarcasm is working. He pulls out his phone immediately afterwards, though. 

*

Derek won’t publicly admit to how pleased he is when Stiles rocks up with Scott at the first major pack meeting since the vampire attack, but he can’t deny it to himself. Peter gives him a knowing glance that borders on the obscene. It had been tough, dealing with the vampires, and Derek wants to have a plan in place should the eventuality come up again. Stiles has a good head for strategy and a solid grounding in vampire lore and those are the only reasons he’s more welcoming than he’d usually be. No one seems to have told Stiles that, who gazes at him half-shock, half-heat, before sloping around his apartment and leaving his scent on every item he encounters with a brush of his fingers.

Derek tells the pack that the vampires were sent by the Marsden pack as revenge for Derek’s treatment and Stiles stealing their seal three months previous. He hadn’t been going to, but one of Deucalion’s major critiques of his performance as an Alpha was his ‘inability to be forthright’. Deucalion nods at him as he delivers the information. Still has an itch up his spine from doing so.

He’s not sure what he was expecting. Gasps of surprise. Isaac to faint. Instead, he gets several engaged teenage werewolves and questions he can’t answer. He can’t decide which is worse. But they begin to formulate strategies for communication and monitoring, as well as different formations they can take when fighting as a group. Like Derek initially thought, Stiles is good at this. He likes to think seven steps ahead, sketching battle plans out like they’re lacrosse plays.

He considers, which is more than Derek can say for himself. While he can get swallowed up in his thoughts, with this kind of circumstance he errs more on the side of rashness and getting the job done as quickly as possible. It’s good to have Stiles’ patience reminding him there are other options. It’s bizarre to refer to Stiles as patient. 

Derek watches him during the meeting. Probably too much. No one else refers to it or gives him any significant looks, not even Peter, but Derek is aware his eyes rest on Stiles more often than not. But like this, Stiles is both spidery and molten and it’s _enticing_. It’s interesting seeing how his movement is affected by his confidence, how he carries himself when he knows he’s right. Stiles is a predator. And a damn good one, based on how he approaches the idea of a threat. Derek should have seen it before. 

At the end of the meeting, Derek goes to slink up to his room, read a book, he’s halfway through Crime and Punishment. He knows the younger pack members are planning to go to Scott’s for a gaming night. Nothing like plotting the downfall of your enemies to put you in the mood for Tekken 6. 

Stiles stops him with a hand on his arm. “You should come,” he says, more order than request. “I’d like to see you die a multitude of deaths.”

“You think I’d be the one dying? My reflexes are faster than yours, my real world experience is stronger than yours, and I’ve had more years to perfect my craft. You’re the one who’s going to be smashed to smithereens.”

Stiles doesn’t look in the least bit perturbed. He smiles at Derek. Properly smiles, with all his shiny teeth. He leans forward, tilts his mouth to Derek’s ear. If they were an inch closer, his lips would be brushing against his earlobe. 

“Prove it,” he challenges. 

Derek doesn’t prove it. When the time comes, Scott has rigged the tournament so that Stiles and Derek wouldn’t be playing against one another until the final rounds. Erica beats Stiles, Boyd beats him. It’s offensive and it takes all his willpower not to complain at length. It’s the darkest urge inside to show Stiles that he can match him. He shouldn’t even think they’re equals, let alone strive to impress him. 

Stiles nudges up to him at the kitchen table where he’s retreated to grumble in blissful silence and eat Scott’s homemade cheese quesadillas. Derek would protest, but his mouth is full. 

“Don’t worry, big guy, we’ll have our day,” Stiles says, conversationally.

Derek wonders when exactly it happened that Stiles would simply talk to him without it leading to one or the other of them threatening maiming. He thinks it may have happened longer ago than he’d care to acknowledge. Stiles takes a bite of his own quesadilla, letting out a sinful moan as a string of melted cheese dangles from the corner of his lips. Derek doesn’t stare. Purposefully does not stare.

“I want you in my pack,” Derek says. “Officially. I mean --- I’d like you to be in my pack officially, if you wanted to be. There’s an initiation rite that involves a blood oath. I won’t be offended if you don’t want to do it, and I’ll still be happy to work with you.”

“You’re happy to work with me?” Stiles asks, ignoring everything else in favor of the least important words Derek said.

“Yes,” Derek replies, looking at Stiles and hoping he doesn’t seem furtive. “More than I say.”

“Then I’d be honored to be in your pack,” Stiles answers with a small smile. 

Derek’s beginning to think the whole optimism thing isn’t a giant crock of shit.

*

“Kill him,” Derek yells. His eyes are all red and fury and, frankly, Stiles is equal parts alarmed and turned on. “Kill him and see how I react. He’s mine. My pack. You have no claim.”

Tabitha Marsden smirks down at him. “Oh, isn’t it sweet, you’re the Hale Alpha’s little pet!”

Stiles is seriously sick of the cartoon villains they encounter from month to month. Tabitha is technically as beautiful as she was last time he saw her, but the expression on her face makes her ugly, twisted with bitterness. She shakes him with the hand wrapped around the back of his neck, and Stiles is also seriously sick of being held captive. 

“If I turn him,” she yells back to Derek, “he’ll be mine.”

Derek springs at them, wrenching Stiles free of Tabitha’s claws and commanding him to run. Surely Derek knows him better than that by now? Stiles won’t abandon Derek; never has, never will. He shakes out his pockets and finds some herbs Deaton gave him for situations just like this, situations in which a spark was needed. 

Derek appears to be winning the fight, but Stiles knows appearances can be deceiving. Tabitha’s been an Alpha a lot longer than Derek has and no doubt has some tricks up her sleeve. Sure enough, she spins and pins him neatly within the minute, raising one clawed hand up behind her as if to bring it down against his neck. Stiles has to be quick, but thankfully that’s something he’s been working on, sprinkling his concoction all over her back. 

There are terrible creaking sounds as she starts to freeze. Her skin takes on a bluish hue and she contorts in a stilted rictus. Stiles deliberately went for the opposite of fire, not wanting Derek to bear the brunt of the attack, but thinking that if he did, it wouldn’t bring back bad memories. Stiles runs around them, yanks under Derek’s armpits and pulls him out from underneath Tabitha Marsden’s frozen body. It’s temporary. She’s conscious. They could inflict a fuck load’s worth of damage in the meantime. 

Stiles tells Derek this, loudly and pointedly. This was always one of their plans and he knows, but adding some showmanship and theater will make the next few moments sweeter. Stiles stands, tall and proud, as Derek tells Tabitha in no uncertain terms what will happen to her if she goes after his pack again, either personally or by proxy. He’s cool and detached about it and that’s what makes it so chilling. Which, hah, Stiles thinks, he loves puns when they’re used for good and not evil. 

They leave her, bent oddly in a kind of warped crouch. When she regains sensation she’ll probably fall on her face and Stiles almost wants to see it. He wants to go home with Derek more. 

“You should have run,” Derek says when they’re in the Camaro and heading toward his apartment. 

“Yeah, I probably should have and let you become wolf-chow, but you know, I rarely do as I’m told.”

Derek snorts and Stiles takes that as an encouraging sign. He forges on, wanting to clear the air between them, get some things in the open, expressed in words as well as glances. 

“Isn’t that why you wanted me in your pack in the first place? Because you like the challenge?”

“That’s part of it,” Derek says with a nod. “But you’ll be disappointed when you learn that it was also so that I could protect you. Now that we’re pack we have a bond. I can sense where you are, whether you’re in danger.”

“Pffft. Like you needed any help stalking me,” Stiles mocks. He taps Derek lightly on the arm and can feel a contented hum settle in his chest. “You should know that I don’t mind being protected, as long as I get to protect you back.”

Derek looks at him, pressing his lips in and wetting them with a flick of his tongue. “ _That_ is why I wanted you in my pack.”

*

(+1)

“Dude, you are so gonna die a little death,” Stiles says with a wild, untamed grin. 

His hands ruck up in Derek’s shirt, splay against his shoulders. Derek can feel his thumbs framing his tattoo. Anger isn’t the only thing that brings out Stiles’ flexible side. He gasps, hot and wet, in Derek’s ear. Caresses the shell with his lips. Derek can’t stop exploring the lines and planes of his body, teasing at the bottom hem of his shirt, brushing his fingers over his right arm. 

“You will too,” Derek promises. 

First promise that hasn’t been a menace. They truly have made progress. 

Stiles gives a whole bodied roll against him when he dips his right hand into the back of his jeans. He bends his head and sucks on Derek’s neck, teeth scraping lightly at his jugular. Derek finds he’s surprisingly okay with that. He can sense all of Stiles’ pent up energy and wants to know what it would feel like washing over him, whether he’d feel its tug and pull for days to come. He maneuvers him ever-closer with a firm push to the small of his back. Cants his hips so that they slot together better. Stiles’ sharp edges fit perfectly against his own. 

They kiss and grind for a long time, Derek savoring every noise and heavy breath Stiles makes. He could do this and little else, he thinks. Find himself in Stiles’ depths. But Stiles has demands and he makes them with insistent touches and dark gazes, in the things he doesn’t say and the things he does. 

“How do you want me?” he asks, and Derek doesn’t know where to start. Dozens of scenarios flit across his mind. He’s thought about this. For over a year.

“In my mouth,” he settles for. 

Stiles gapes at him a little, a blush rising across his cheeks. 

“I really never imagined that as an initial offer,” Stiles says, wonderingly. “Always thought it’d have to be more of a last resort.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Stiles,” he replies, soft and quiet. 

“Which, in my view, is a good thing, because it means I have a lot to learn. Always have loved research.”

“That feels like a word that shouldn’t be a euphemism and yet is.”

Stiles grins at him and the effect is blinding. Derek can’t help but grin in turn, eliciting the most beautiful expression he’s ever seen Stiles make; something full of delight and enthusiasm.

He drops to his knees, pops open the button of Stiles’ jeans. Stiles immediately goes to card his hand through his hair, give an encouraging tug. He smells enthralling. Derek’s always liked Stiles scent more than he suspected he should and like this it’s overwhelming, thick with arousal, but also, importantly, affection. 

He pulls the jeans down to Stiles’ knees, but can’t summon the patience to let him kick them off entirely. He mouths at Stiles through his boxer briefs just as Stiles strips off his T-shirt, eager to wrap his lips around the length of his cock. Stiles is hard and thick against his tongue. Derek sucks at the material, making it damp enough it’s half-translucent as he pulls away a second to finally allow himself skin to skin contact. He looks up and Stiles is staring at him with something like reverence, like he never dreamed he could have this and now it’s his. 

He watches closely as he peels the boxer briefs down to rest with the jeans. Sucks in a breath when Stiles’ cock slaps up against his abdomen, red tip smearing precome. Stiles’ pupils dilate and Derek compulsively licks his lips, gets himself good and wet. The moan Stiles gives at that is low and Derek stupidly thinks that if he were a more poetic man he’d be able to come up with another hundred adjectives, but all he can really think is _wanting_. 

Stiles wants him. Has done for a while. It settles the last tiny edge of doubt shooting through his veins and he moves forward, slowly, carefully, taking Stiles’ cock into his mouth. He licks into his slit, collecting all the precome, then bobs further down, as much as he can handle right now.

This is good. Giving just to give. No ulterior motives other than to see Stiles happy, to see him find something new out about himself, about Derek. It’s the first time he’s ever given a blow job with the sole intent of making someone smile. 

And Stiles does smile, lazy and uncontrolled. He gazes down at Derek, biting into his lower lip and fluttering his eyelashes whenever he likes something Derek does with his tongue. Derek loves how he feels against him, loves the heat and taste and scent. Loves how Stiles can’t help rocking his hips forward, can’t stop pulling at his hair. He opens his own jeans to give himself some relief, tugs his cock between his thumb and first two fingers, trying to take off some of the edge. It doesn’t help. It makes it worse.

There’s a blush rising up Stiles’ chest and his abdomen keeps tensing and Derek wants to say, “let go”, but doesn’t want to stop sucking. So he just takes more, gives more, holding Stiles’ hips tight and going lax and filthy with it. He varies his rhythm and peers up at Stiles, making sure every time he pulls off he does so with an obscene slurping pop. He wraps his hand around the base of his cock and strips him, once, twice, taking him in again when he’s sure he’s going to come. 

Stiles grunts, trembles all over, and finally comes, hard, just how Derek wants, just how he needs. He looks like he’s about to collapse, so Derek braces him, stands in one fluid motion, pulling Stiles into something that’s less embrace and more ‘solid object he can rut against’. It takes a comically short time for him to find his own release, but he isn’t embarrassed or shameful over it. He’s past that point. 

“You say you don’t like to kill things, but I am dead. D E A D,” Stiles slurs against his cheek. 

Despite the other times that’s seemed like a distinct possibility, just this once it feels like a small price to pay.


End file.
